A Belated Welcome to 2015… and a request…

So… New Years Happened.

One minute it was 2014, then all of a sudden it was 2015.

…that was also 42 days ago.

Since then I’ve done no writing whatsoever, and sometime around early-mid January, I reached a point where I decided that I was going to completely write-off any writing for the first month of the year to allow myself the time to catch up on all the overdue daily prompts that were still left from December 2014.

…however, after going into great detail writing at least four of those posts on my iPad, the app had a bug in it, causing my drafts to disappear every time I went to amend / edit them… so I ended up having to re-write them again. And again. And again. And after a number of complaints to WP, I ended up giving up and just waiting for some actual downtime in front of my laptop to properly re-write them yet again.

Today was the day that I finally caught up with all of those posts.

So NOW I can finally turn my attention to my creative writing, but therein lies the problem…

I need to find a good place to find some weekly / bi-weekly or (at a stretch) monthly writing challenge prompts. I know that there’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but that’s not until, like, November or something, and I’m not quite ready to start writing a novel, I need a bit of practise first, so I need your help to find a great place for prompts, so please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Daily Prompt – Secret Santa

You get to choose one gift — no price restrictions — for any person you want. The caveat? You have to give it anonymously. What gift would you give, and to whom?

This is quite a hard decision to make – every person knows a lot of people, and there are a lot of people whom are genuinely in need, not to mention the countless others who are living in poverty around the world.

Daily Prompt – Happy Radars

Are you a good judge of other people’s happiness? Tell us about a time you were spot on despite external hints to the contrary (or, alternatively, about a time you were dead wrong).

I generally tend to be a pretty good judge of character, unless of course that person is a complete pathological liar.

Daily Prompt – Soulful Machines

Machines, appliances, and gadgets sometimes feel like they have their own personalities — from quirky cars to dignified food processors. What’s the most “human” machine you own?

I would love it if my appliances had actual personalities, but I think we’re a few years away from that.

Daily Prompt: I Walk the Line

Have you got a code you live by? What are the principles or set of values you actively apply in your life?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s a ‘code’ that I live by… values is a better way to describe it.

Growing up in the country and having relatively normal and down to earth parents instilled a great deal of principles and values in me at quite a young age, which have been carried over into my adult life.

By comparison, I look at the youth of today and am completely flabbergasted as to how they are able to get away with a fraction of the stuff they get away with. Now, back in my day (god, even saying that just makes me feel like a grandpa!) if we ever did anything naughty, our parents would have no reservation in giving us a hiding – whether it was a hand, a wooden spoon or a belt. And when I was a kid, if I had friends over and they were being as naughty as I was, my parents had no reservations about giving my friends a hiding as well. And vice versa. I recall only one time was I ever at my friends house, and his mum went ballistic at both of us – she gave us both a flogging with a wooden spoon, broke the wooden spoon and sent us to his room without dinner, and took away his Sega Master System for the night.

Now, once you’re all done picking your jaws up off the ground, let me just make one thing perfectly clear – it was not a regular practice for our parents to smack us, or our friends. We knew we’d gone too far, and we knew what the punishment was for going too far, but we still did it. We knew that it was risky to push those kind of boundaries, but we got what we deserved. And my friends parents weren’t exactly going around smacking any kid that walked through their front door for a sleep-over with their child – our parents were friends, and had already discussed things like punishments etc when we were at each others houses. They would never have laid a hand on somebody else’s child without discussing it with their parents first.

Just thought I’d clear that up before somebody flips out and calls the police!! *lol*

And even then, it would only need to happen once, and guaranteed, we’d never do it again – so clearly we learnt from our mistakes!!

Growing up, I had a very strong belief that everything you do – every action you take and every decision you make has a consequence, and you can do nothing but accept those consequences – regardless of whether they are good or bad; happy or sad. I know I’ve certainly made some mistakes that I have later regretted, but I still completely own them regardless.

I was taught to always use your manners. Please. Thankyou. I beg your pardon. You’re welcome. Manners these days seems like such a foreign concept, which is quite depressing.

I was fortunate enough to a) be rather intelligent as a child; and b) have parents who realised that from a very, very early age, they didn’t need to sugar-coat anything for me. Whatever it was they wanted to tell me, they’d  make sure that they just told me – like they were talking to an adult. If I didn’t understand, they’d break it down and explain it in simpler terms that I could understand. I was the kid who was sitting there reading mum’s psychology text books at age 7 or 8, whilst she was writing her assignments as part of her degree – I didn’t need to be wrapped up in cotton wool like most kids are already expecting in todays society.

Always help others. Regardless of how, there’s something to be said for doing a good deed for somebody else. It could be as simple as cooking dinner for them, or helping them  with an essay, or washing their car / doing their laundry etc. Or it could be helping an elderly person across the road, or sharing your umbrella at the traffic lights who’s standing there in the rain getting wet. Or maybe buying a meal for a homeless person, or donating a few bags of clothes, or donating money to charity – there’s always something you can do to help somebody else. It doesn’t need to necessarily be a big grand gesture – it can be anything!!. Even something as simple as just sending them a bunch of flowers if they’re feeling down can speak volumes to somebody,

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/prompt-walk-the-line/